‘I believe that the Zionist dream is not viable as long as it is based on wrongs’

Rabbi Avidan Freedman

Ayelett Shani writes in Haaretz on 29 Aug 2024

Please introduce yourself.

I’m the partner of Devorah, and the father of five amazing children. I grew up in Canada, in a Zionist and religious home. I came on aliyah from New York when we were a young family with two children, because we want to contribute all we can to the Zionist project. I have a master’s degree in Jewish education and am an ordained [Modern Orthodox] rabbi, both in the United States and with the Chief Rabbinate in Israel. I came to Israel in order to be an educator, and I have engaged in that, at a Jerusalem high school. I’m also an activist, but that’s not something I planned to be.

How did you get involved in all that?
A few years ago, we brought a speaker, [settler and activist] Eli Yosef, to our high school. His talk was supposed to be about Raoul Wallenberg [the Swedish diplomat who rescued Jews in World War II], but what he actually spoke about was Israeli arms exports. I was stunned. Shocked. All my life I’ve learned about Israel, but that was the first time I encountered the fact that in almost every place where there’s genocide underway, or serious human rights violations, Israeli arms are involved. From my point of view, it was like an ethical atomic bomb.

Israeli arms are sold to one side, sometimes to both sides in the same conflict. Security exports, as people here like to call them, are totally blind to circumstances. Arms are sold to whomever is willing to pay.

In general, Israel sells arms as long as long as they are not liable to hurt us, or harm our relations with the United States. There’s no problem if it harms innocent people in a godforsaken country. At first I thought such views were just anti-Israeli slander, so I checked it out and investigated and probed, and the more I tried to persuade myself that maybe it’s not so bad, I realized that it’s even worse than what I thought originally. And it’s all whitewashed and silenced.

There are two significant factors here. First of all, the scale of Israel’s security exports, which is huge, certainly in relation to the country’s size and heft in the international arena; and in addition, the absence of true oversight over this.

There is Defense Ministry supervision over every transaction – it’s stipulated by law – but when I grasped that they give their seal of approval to every transaction, even though it is quite obvious that it’s going to harm innocent people, I said, “This is on me.” I can’t ignore it, because it’s being done in my name. I started by organizing demonstrations and then founded the Yanshoof NGO [dedicated to stopping Israeli arms sales to human rights violators] and started to look for partners in the political arena.

I saw that the first necessary step to take was to amend legislation, so that in Israel, like in many places, there would be a law or an amendment to one that prohibits arms exports to governments that perpetrate serious human rights violations. If you look at the 10 biggest arms exporters in the world – of which Israel is one, of course – there are only two without that kind of legislation: Russia and Israel.

Some will say that it’s naïve on your part to think that you can influence that industry, which is based largely on turning a blind eye to what is taking place, on personal ties and on a vast, extensive map of interests.

I believe that the Zionist dream is not viable as long as it is based on wrongs – and that [arms sales to problematic regimes] of course is not the only wrong. I came to Israel to be part of that dream, so I have no other option.

Maybe we should clarify the fact that you are not against arms exports as such – maybe even the opposite.

My NGO is not pacifist. I support an arms industry, and I think there is a legitimate use for arms, and alongside it a use that’s not legitimate – and that distinction is critical. Saying cynically that everything is immoral anyway so what difference does it make won’t get us anywhere. We also sell arms to properly run countries like Switzerland and France, for instance. They are not untainted, but when you sell to orderly, functioning countries, law-abiding countries, with supervision and various mechanisms of oversight, that’s one thing. When you sell to a country where the law is to murder and perpetrate genocide, that’s something else.

And we must understand that even though this subject sounds esoteric, there’s a broad consensus around it, including voices on the far right [in Israel] that aren’t known for their struggle on behalf of human rights, but nevertheless are against arms exports to murderous regimes. We have had demonstrations with supporters of [libertarian and former Likud MK Moshe] Feiglin together with people from Meretz.

Look, obviously, in properly run countries, arms aren’t used for [perpetrating] genocide, but it’s far from certain that their use will be ethical.

I look forward to the day when we will beat our weapons into plowshares, and I pray for that mightily, but people and countries also have to protect themselves. We need to exercise supervision to ensure that the arms sales are to countries that have laws that are just, along with enforcement and responsibility. And by the way, that’s why I’m in favor of the American sanctions against us. The Americans are right to impose sanctions on the settlers, because Israel isn’t enforcing the law. I am also in favor of investigating the wrongs that were done in Sde Teiman [a reference to an incident of apparent violent sexual abuse at the army detention camp for Palestinian prisoners from Gaza].

You’re talking about a Gordian knot between morality and religious Zionism. I think that community’s sweeping opposition to a hostage deal – and I have no way to avoid generalizations here – is immoral.
I would not consider the view that a hostage deal endangers the state immoral, if it existed in a vacuum. In the situation we are in at the moment, the choice to forgo the deal in order to go on fighting until “total victory,” which in my view is also something of a fantasy, is anti-moral.

Please explain.

The implication is that the very foundation of our existence in this country is force, deterrence, so others will fear us. To my mind, that is both an anti-moral and an anti-religious approach. If what ensures our existence here is only force of arms, only living by the sword, we haven’t done anything. When I look at the religious perception, at the Torah itself – the statement “By the sword shall you live” is Esau’s blessing. We are meant to embody the opposite. I believe in the religious approach that says force may be needed, but what is supposed to tip the scales, to be the secret of our existence, is morality.

Consistently, and over time, the data shows the opposition of the religious Zionist public to a hostage deal. What happened to the principle of “redemption of captives”? Which values supersede that?

The principle of redemption of captives rests on the value of life, the formative principle of halakha [religious law]. Almost the supreme one. A captive is a living person who is in danger of death and abuse, and therefore must be rescued. In the face of that is the argument that a deal could endanger the lives of others in the future [i.e., because the price of such a deal will rise, more dangerous prisoners will be freed, etc.]. I understand that, but I don’t believe in it. I feel that my public doesn’t grasp that the formative ethos of Israeli society is the value of social solidarity.

I would like to mention the position of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who heads a yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. I don’t know what your opinion is of him, and I don’t want to tell you what mine is – but he is against a hostage deal, of course. His rationale is that the redemption of captives at a huge price today will lead to more abductions in the future.

After the “Jibril deal” [in 1985, when Israel released 1,150 security prisoners in return for three soldiers held by Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command], Rabbi Goren [Shlomo Goren, chief rabbi of Israel] made it clear that the deal was contrary to the halakha, but then he immediately added that in our rather unusual situation, that of a state that sends soldiers into battle, this [rationale] wasn’t relevant and that the government bears a moral responsibility to do all it can to get them back.

In ancient Rome, whoever was taken captive was abandoned, because he was supposed to fight to the death, and if he was taken captive, that meant he was weak or worthless. Historically, the Jews were always ready to pay far more for the redemption of captives than the halakha stipulated. The halakha stated that it’s forbidden, but the Jewish communities insisted, because their underlying formative value was solidarity. So, what do we want? What is our ethos? For a soldier to go into battle like in ancient Rome or like in Israel?

I think religious Zionism is opting for ancient Rome. Aviner doesn’t make a distinction between civilians and soldiers. That stream maintains that a civilian who’s abducted from his home in pajamas needs to sacrifice himself for the sake of everyone.

I admit that in a certain place I agree with him. I moved to Israel from a comfortable life in New York; it’s possible that I am sacrificing my children, who with God’s help will serve in the army, for the sake of the Zionist project. In that I do believe. But yes, we really see that the values of force and revenge and militarism are far more dominant today, not only among the extremists but also in mainstream religious Zionism.

In fact, the argument that people are liable to be abducted in the future is crazy, because it completely ignores the fact that there is a government whose responsibility is to prevent that. The shift from exile to sovereignty is meant to be expressed in terms of responsibility. The state is supposed to say: “I abandoned these citizens, it is my responsibility to bring them back, and if that is going to endanger other citizens in the future, we need to work even harder to ensure their security.”

Rabbi Aviner concluded his remarks by saying that emotion softens the heart. In other words, it [the hostage issue] is not a halakhic issue, or a moral one, it’s actually an emotional issue.

I’ll quote a halakhic response from [the 16th-century scholar] Rabbi David ben Zimra on this question of Jewish communities always being willing to pay an exorbitant price for captives, even if it’s against the halakha. After he tries to find an explanation for this, without success, he says something like: Let them be – Israel, who are the children of the patriarch Abraham, who are the merciful offspring of the merciful.

What is he actually saying here? What is our essence? In my view it is this: that we are the merciful offspring of the merciful. That is as it should be. Also when we say that the Jews should resemble God, we are saying that just as God is merciful and compassionate, you too should be merciful and compassionate. Those are the virtues.

Rabbi Aviner knows this. When people say that we will live by the sword, this is the Middle East – in my eyes this is an expression of assimilation. We didn’t move into this neighborhood to be like them [other peoples]. We came with our tradition and our morality, and that is how we are meant to live.

If so, why doesn’t the religious Zionist public, which you say, for example, is against Israel’s sale of arms to murderous regimes, find a connection to tradition and morality when it comes to rescuing the hostages?

That contrast exists and is personified also by Rabbi Aviner, who is one of the leading voices against arms deals. I think it’s related to security and also to a certain blindness when it comes to the importance of solidarity as a formative ethos. Maybe because religious Zionism doesn’t need solidarity in order to fight for the Land of Israel.

For the Land of Israel – not for the State of Israel. That’s exactly the priority here. I wonder why the word “messianic” hasn’t yet come up in this interview.

In regard to prioritization, I think you’re right. There is prioritization of the need to fight and to win a total victory in the war, over the lives of the hostages.

The elected representatives of the religious Zionist movement prioritize the messianic vision clearly and definitively. Settlement in the Gaza Strip. National Missions Minister Orit Strock talked about this long before October 7. From their viewpoint, it’s a cardinal value.

I agree that [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Strock [both from the Religious Zionism party] and other figures in the leadership of the religious Zionism movement harbor an apocalyptic messianic approach.

Are you a messianic?
I am. But I call myself a pragmatic messianic.

Meaning what?

I am a messianic, but I grew up with the approach that says we are in a period of redemption that is evolving naturally, step by step, and therefore we need to exercise pragmatic considerations. Smotrich’s messianism isn’t pragmatic. It’s a messianism that says: We will fight against Iran alone and we don’t need the help of the United States in the least, because God will help us.

We’ve seen that it works less well in the economic realm, with a “walk in my statutes” economy – that is, an economy that is essentially “managed” by God.
From his point of view, it works. It’s a bit loony, but I think he gives himself a good grade in managing the economy.

That’s known as a delusion.

I don’t know. Deep inside he harbors an approach that says God is on our side. I’m pretty sure that those who identify with that approach are in the minority. At most one-third of the religious Zionist public. I think the majority don’t want a war of Gog and Magog. Maybe Smotrich does.

Maybe he’s forgetting to some extent that in the course of a war of Gog and Magog, most of us are slated to be annihilated, so the religious viewpoint over all the years was that we ought not to push for it. With Smotrich, and certainly for [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben-Gvir, I don’t think this comes from an ideological place at all, well, maybe it also does, but I see it as infantile behavior and thuggery.

In what world can we win a multi-arena war with only God on our side? Are we in the Book of Numbers? I’m not clear about what “pragmatic messianism” is. Irrespective of my personal views, it doesn’t seem to me to be connected to reality.

I think it’s very much connected to reality. I would even go so far as to say that in a certain place you’d even agree with it, because as I see it, messianism is actually progress – and I am deliberately using a word that is unacceptable to the right. Belief in the Messiah is an insane belief that holds that the world is progressing to a better place, even if the facts on the ground say the opposite. Believing in the good is messianism. Working in this world for a better world, that is messianism.

Ben-Gvir. Smotrich. Otzma Yehudit MK Har-Melech. That whole mad gallery of people – do they believe in the good? I see only anti-morality, violence, lust for revenge, racism, narrow-mindedness, militarism. What does that say about your public, which is represented by those elected officials? About the fact that these are the people your public supports?

I will say this in the way that will be the most difficult from my point of view. The occupation has corrupted. When I say “occupation,” I mean [what has happened in] the whole territory between the river and the sea, and when I say that the occupation has corrupted, I mean that power corrupts.

When I look at arms exports, too, I see people who were moral becoming immoral. Generals who devoted their lives to the defense of the homeland are making a fortune off wars in South Sudan. It happens there, too, the corrupting power.

I agree with you that this is manifested externally within the religious Zionist community, because of the constant friction that is created by the settlements or the occupation, or whatever you want to call it. From a religious point of view, a believer’s point of view, it’s an occupation. The Torah never hid the fact that we were conquering the place from other peoples. It’s true that power corrupts. Therefore, it needs to be managed as morally and as ethically as possible.

How do you reconcile that splendid declaration with your way of life? You live in a settlement. You accept a situation that isn’t only occupation, but also suppression and rule over another people. Not far from your home is the notorious Rachel’s Crossing [the army’s Checkpoint 300, near Bethlehem]. You’re part of it. How do you live with that?

I live in tension. I believe that we have the right to live here, and that with that right comes responsibility. Our very presence in this land, in Efrat and also in Tel Aviv, creates great challenges regarding the use of force, and we are obligated to manage those challenges in an ethical way. I think that every Israeli should experience that tension. In the same way, if we live here thanks to our arming genocide in Myanmar and South Sudan, that is a moral question that should upset all of us.

It’s likely that African children mined the cobalt in my iPhone. Does that upset me? Yes, but apparently not enough. It’s almost impossible to live in the world today without being responsible in part for someone else’s suffering. Still, there’s a difference between buying an iPhone and [settlers] perpetrating pogroms in Palestinian villages, for example.

That is a terrible thing. It is a horrible desecration of God’s name. It endangers the settlement project and our existence here as such. I personally am trying to work with other people against it. It’s a shame and a disgrace that our leadership doesn’t condemn it and doesn’t come out against it. And if there is condemnation, it’s half-hearted. People who demonstrate on Kaplan [Street, Tel Aviv, in the anti-government protests] are condemned more than those who torch a vehicle. Not only by the political leadership, but by the rabbinical leadership too.

If these things happen and we don’t oppose them, then we really don’t have a right to be here. I pray that we will learn the right lesson from the October 7 disaster. This must be a powerful wake-up call for all of Israeli society: to understand how to base our existence on values and morality and not on force.

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